Jerub-Baal's Spleen Vent

24.11.16

"Officials at North Park University say a student by the name of Taylor Volk is no longer enrolled there after an investigation determined her alleged receipt of Trump-inspired hate messages to be a total fabrication."

For each fabricated story the left churn out to prove their case ruins the legitimacy of a dozen genuine stories, whether hate crimes, homophobia or islamophobia or climate science.

You need but look at Brexit to see this; there were real examples of racism and abuse that had clearly fomented during the campaign but who could take any seriously when you had every slight and gloat reported as abuse to the police.

A pliant, client media was busy telling us the Leave campaign was a racists' paradise, whilst giving a platform to every lunatic trot who claimed unintelligently that a rise in national pride equaled fascism, with little understanding in either; it has consistently blamed all ills that beset this country on us saying no to a defunct and pointless technocracy; all the while ignoring the uncomfortable fact that nigh on EVERY doom scenario predicted by Remain has stubbornly refused to come to pass.

Most galling has been the persistent passing of every positive bit of business or economic news as being unrelated to any political momentum of Leave #DespiteBrexit, and forcing the same boring conversation and polished turds of arguments to be replaced in a vain hope this might magically make us all change our minds on something that hasn't happened yet.

16.11.16

The New York post has an interesting article on the Electoral College system, it's inherent flaws and advantages; it's a good read, but I dont think it addresses a more primordial problem with the establishment in general.

Here's the paradox I see at the heart of the electoral college conundrum: say for a minute we ignore the now mounting reports of Vote rigging, the illegal immigrants voting in the election and vote machine code tampering potentially mounting into the millions it was a closely run thing with perhaps less than a percentage point or 2 between Clinton and Trump; to my mind this gives neither candidate a mandate for full execution of their manifestos.

That said the electoral colleges gave it overwhelmingly to Trump; how? Simple: some smaller states have an in-built weighting to the value of their college vote - put simply they get more votes between fewer people's meaning targeting specific states who waver but have a larger clout in voter college numbers, even in aggregate, is a winning strategy.

So it's a terrible system sure; however, do you know what would be a worse system, nay, a system that would split America pretty quickly? One in which policy decisions were made by a minor majority of rich states like California, New York and New Hampshire which permeated every aspect of life and identity for every other state. Texas alone would secede within a minute of such a system.

The electoral college is a break on this hegemony and whilst it is a bad one perhaps it stops a more difficult question from needing to be asked: has federalism gone too far in the lives of ordinary Americans? Has state power? If the establishment believes it hasn't (which is what the answer would be if the elites ever manage to take down the electoral college system) I guarantee this questions would re-emerge.

This is the paradox at the heart of Brexit too; so Remainers don't like the Brexit Vote - Too. Fucking. Bad; we played by your rules, tolerated the cheating in promoting your cause at every level and column, put up with the abuse of being called xenophobes, racists and bigots, and still won, and the rules said we left as a country. If you don't like those rules and are moaning about it now, or complaining that Leave'rs were uninformed or that they were lied to necessitating a de-icer reinforces the point; we give too much weight to too few people in our lives and sometimes that means we get answers we don't like.

You get used to it; some Leave'rs have been putting up with that bullshit for nearly 50 years.

5.7.16

Deep down I don't think I'm alone - he's affable, gregarious and quite likes a pint and has managed to project an air of commonality with the common man that few politicians could match. He is (was) in an enviable position in terms of popularity (sorry but a few agitators reading socialist wanker at a Anti-Brexit rally don't count. For anything).

But here's the thing: we can be disarmed by likeability in a person, in a movement; Farage did more to move UKIP from being an intellectual exercise in liberal conservative thinking to a populist right movement based on superstition and myth surrounding how this country is run and how it is oppressed; he moved it's thinking to a place where it dips it's toe in far left scares about a bourgeois elite that overturns the demos at will and he has capitalised on that in this debate. Simultaneously he has made UKIP as a force in the EU parliament less a principled stance and as corrupt or worse than the rest there; serving little as an actual party as a symbol of rejection - fine if your about to leave, less so if you've been on the take for decades.

All that said Mr. Butler here has made a point not dissimilar to my own before and after the referendum; UKIP will rightly disappear now if we let it - we will still have a relationship with the EU and it's member states but one that isn't mutually abusive and one that is based on comparative advantage and less on mutual loathing. This is a good thing.

Unless we hand UKIP the victory by being proved right by an elites actions, no doubt dressed as the will of the people.

That never works out well, for us plebs and certainly not the elites who thought they knew better; just ask Germany, ask Russia, ask any number of countries that were oppressed along an ideological fault line.

Out shopping at a local Aldi in Leeds, she saw a saloon pulling a handmade ad trailer sporting a Vote Leave logo and a graphic spouting something along the lines of:

"...we want our country back...go home!"

Sadly she didn't have the presence of mind to take a picture of the car nor the trailer and was as confused as the other customers of Aldi, a major German supermarket chain that has just about made buying our weekly shop a significantly cheaper and less worrisome prospect where I live.

It is sad that some people have conflated the Brexit message with that of a racially motivated exercise in ethinic cleansing; worse, it is saddening that many would seek to tar one side of the debate with fault here or claim outrage in exactly the opposite manner than they had for similar events mere days before:

The coverage of Michael Adebowale - one of Lee Rigby's killers - did not focus on his history of mental illness. It focused on his ideology.

This following Owen's walking out of a Sky News Morning Papers Debate in which everyone appeared to agree with him on every point but were apparently breaking some unknown rule about a member of one group owning the right to outrage and language surrounding a sad event in that group (well, assuming you were the right kind of member of that community anyway.)

Sadder still, though, is the fact that anyone thinking immigration is just going to stop when we leave is laughably naive and/or mistaken; net EU immigration makes up less than half of all that incoming to the UK:

Migration is great for the UK; we get all these clever migrants schooled and paid for by other member countries who pay into the treasury without having taken out to get them there; unhelpfully, and perhaps with a mere whiff of the conspiracy given how pained the government has been to show the benefits of migration, the number of recipients of UK benefits of any kind are less than 3%.

What is apparent, as even InFact's admitted in one of their pieces, is that there is an inequality in who benefits from this boon, with NEETs with low educational and skills attainment benefitting the least; further, because of appalling monitoring of abuses of the minimum wage system, housing and countless other social problems brought about by cultural differences between arrivals and natives the effect is to disenfranchise just the sort who will be liking the Britain First facebook page or listening to the likes of the BNP twerps. They will take advantage of what are legitimate concerns on immigration because our political class has objectively failed to.

In many ways the StrongerIn Crowd are right; the problems we see with migration are actually problems with the mediocrity of our own government; however, they perpetrate the myth that with greater reform at an EU level we can some how get past these problems: the short answer to this is that Europe isn't going to change in the way we would like and our remaining is preventing it from changing in the way it wants. Even David Cameron's renegotiation has no real legal binding and this was backed up with a threat of Brexit.

So what is the answer here? Why Leave if a major motivation behind leaving in the ability to control our borders is unlikely to happen? Smarter people than I have put it down better but the short answer is simple: options.

Brexit gives us options; we've tried to get our terms from the European member states and commission and we have failed - with a clear majority supporting the right of freedom of movement and continual access to the single market post-Brexit our parliament will likely opt for an EEA agreement and adoption of the whole acquis initially with a view to working through it and replacing where applicable (as per the plan); EEA states are only obliged to adopt parts of the acquis relating to the single market and even then retain a right of reservation; not obligating themselves to access that part of the market unless business in their country is happy to meet that particular regulatory regimen.

A Brexit doesn't oblige us to adopt "open borders" but "freedom of movement"; as the good Dr North pointed out freedom of movement can mean a variety of things. That said the one thing Brexit doesn't mean is giving in to the Far Right; I am happy to accept the asshole that did this was one such idiot because I don't identify with such a vapid waste of oxygen; and so people understand my mood I would gladly take in 30 refugees escaping genuine life threatening turmoil for every one of these malcontented pond scum that identifies with those folk in the first image, whom I could happily throw into the sea, preferably by trebuchet.

I look forward to 3 things from a Brexit:

The Mandelson's, Kinnock's and European Union wage-slaves and political claque suddenly becoming unemployed. I particularly look forward to everyone realising there is little point to UKIP post-Brexit and get back to holding our main credible parties to account.

Our own broken parliament coming out of the madness of the last 40 years and having to take responsibility for it's many faults and seeing a revitalisation of democracy as a consequence of it's profound stupour. Those in parliament who can will shine and those who cant will be drummed out.

The far right's victory being cut short when they realise they will get none of their desired outcomes from leaving; it will be almost as funny as the look of dismay when none of the doom and gloom of the remain campaign comes to pass.

Few things are sweeter than seeing wrong people proved wrong and put back in their embarrassment holes where they belong.

6.4.16

I like to think of myself as an enlightened guy who has carefully weighed up the EU referendum question whether to leave or remain over many long years and has heard nothing of substance or value about the remain'derp position that isn't immediately outweighed by that of leaving.

Which is why it came as quite shocking to be called a "RAYSEEST NARTZEE!" out of a student digs' window by a yogurt-weaving sandalista; I'm not racist?! Am I? I don't know I guess the virtue-signalling was oozing out of my very flesh hard enough, just the BO from my corpulent person on what was a long leafletting stint through the streets of student-ville, Leeds*.

That was brought depressingly home to me yesterday when this vile and honestly baffling exchange on twitter came about, in which kippers' referred to me as "stupid" and cultish for stating that unravelling decades of ties with the european union would likely be a decadal journey and evolution for both divorcing parties but that a divorce could and should be amicable.

This in their humble opinion was the stupid suggestion.

As compared to their counter suggestion that any withdrawal wishlist should see a push for a GE and a UKIP landslide (no really) and the blocking up of the channel tunnel for use as a "migrant prison"/nuclear waste dump.

The intellectual prowess of these giants was at once pungest as it was noxious, but I am glad to have known it, if not to know what metaphorical windows are for (opening, BTW).

* = otherwise known as Hyde Park - not the cool one, the Yorkshire one.

26.11.15

Osbo yesterday, as a bobby looks on with envy at him showing off his massive crayola box set.

Blair, 1997: we've got some ideas about welfare, thats more than those clowns in the bory's have in any case.

Public, 1997: Let's hear them.

Public, 2003: we are still waiting; why not raise the threshold in line with inflation?

Brown, 2003: oh right...naw won't do that; I'm gonna take ever increasing piles of your cash and give some back to labour voters in deprived areas who have the time to fill out a convoluted multi-page form stating why you deserve it. I'm also going to increase the budget of HMRC past that of our standing army. I'm sure they'll manage it with the same focus and efficiency they do collecting debts from big business on money owed.

Public, 2003: that sounds like a shit idea. We'll take it.

Brown, May 2010: do you know that increase in tax threshold thing? Let's talk about it...

Public, May 2010: too late. bye now.

Brown, May 2010: awe...

Osbo t'Clown, first budget: right then, under duress from my Lib Dumb colleagues who I'm obliged to listen to due to the coalition agreement, here is some more of your money not being taken away in the first place (or as I used to dub it: "my mate Lord Fondleboys champers fund").

Osbo t'Clown: pretty much am, but it's OK I'll be raising your tax threshold to meet less than half the drop, so long as you aren't on minimum wage or unemployed or anything you'll be fine.

Public: like. f**k...

Cameron: 'hm hum...'

Osbo t'Clown: apparently I'm not doing that...for now...

Adam Smith Institute, Oct 2015(and me, pretty much for a decade or longer): why not a negative income tax? That way you can abolish your massively convoluted welfare system, abolish the DWP and recognise true hard work and determination in the tax system while remaining a progressive force for good?

Osbo t'Clown: sounds complicated, and I heard reducing government departments somewhere in there, so naw.

Me: but, but, you could abolish an entire government department: the admin savings alone for the DWP's £170Bn budget would be enough to give everyone a massive tax break; with all benefits folded into a simplified tax system the poorest would get a great deal too, all with fewer wage-takers needed!

7.10.15

No one is for a minute saying this daft bint shouldn't be hoisted upon her own petard (a term historically related to the misfiring of seige munitions used to destroy rampart defences in revolutionary France, killing the ordinance man in the process), only that the banal, asinine assertions of her ilk are really starting to be shown for what they are: banal, asinine assertions, espoused by losers and maybe the rules designed to protect us all from incendiary calls to arms are a little overzealous.

I would rather have hate speach, racism and unsavoury types espousing all kinds of things in plain site so that we can easily tag and manage them, either through intelligence or through...intelligence. The number of losers on the web following this kind of idiot are VANISHINGLY small and mainly promoted by an echochamber of idiocy on social media designed to echo sentiments of such losers (I'm looking at you Twitter); we never see the very quick and powerful dispatch of their stupid ideas post-utterance but they are there, convincing the likes of joe-public to do the right thing, ditch their twitter ribbons and unfollow these cretins.

1.9.15

This was not a hatchet job of Farage - Sarah Montague quite fairly asked if Suzanne Evans was right in her belief that Farage was viewed as a divisive figure in politics; he then went on to moan about the landslide european election win in which UKIP convinced less than 1 in 10 of the available voting public to back his party in milking the eurestablishment teat for another 5 years and just how horrible the Bory's really area.

Having wrong-footed the entirety of the last election and the concomitant public opinion and with a little under 2 years to go he now goes on to claim that UKIP are planning on doing...."something, something, something...migrants are bad...we will wholeheartedly support...one of the candidate organisation to lead the #EUNo campaign" (or the "leave" campaign as it will now be known). Could he be more specific about who he wants to lead the leave campaign? "I haven't the foggiest"... I'm not convinced and I doubt anymore than the 1 in 10 will be too.

Now Master Kassam is now wrong-footing what needs to happen to "thwart" bad press with a BBC "watchdog" and a "bias hotline"; rather than address reasonable criticism yet again proving that the only thing worth reading on Not-so-Breitbart is Nero. His entire rhetoric is akin to my 6 year old daughter complaining that her cheeky 3 year old sister punched her then ran off; there is little that can be done to prevent a toddler being a sociopathic asshole and less so about thwarting it again in the future when there will inevitably be another ruckus; moaning at your enemies and the hand you are dealt won't solve anything and certainly not win you sympathy where you need it - the voting public. It just enforces the view of a bully picking on a whinging child, and by the time it is dealt with, if it ever is, the campaign will be long over,

As has been pointed out elsewhere, ad nauseum, the winning strategy will be to take the high ground; to appear less crazy than the opposition and laugh off their criticism and their overzealous focus on the minutiae of boring statistical and fiscal arguments; you aren't marching to New Jerusalem, you are marching to the door of a customs union and a place on stage of a wider global world. A strategy of whinging and voyeuristic obsession with bias in an organisation known for it's bias will help not one jot; laughing your ass off when the "stay" opponents for a seat at the kiddies table of Little Europe when you point out you want your rightful place with the adults as Global Britain is a winning strategy; looking conciliatory when they warm up the tired old 80s trope about "fax democracy" Britain and you point out that as one of the biggest economies in the world we would be doing the faxing, if we weren't already on email having thrown the fax machine along with all the spice girls CDs and global technicolor tshirts in the shed.

The Department for Education has sought to ‘clarify’ its tweet which appears to brand school lessons in gay rights ‘nonsense’.

The bizarre tweet was posted on the DfE’s official account this afternoon and reads: ‘Nonsense to say schools “must teach gay rights”. We want schools to teach broad curric based on British values.’"

So my reading of this is:

Gay rights aren't a thing because...

...British Values (patent pending) enshrine tolerance of ones own proclivities as long as they don't infringe on another persons...

And British Values (pp) are a required aspect of the curriculum.

This doesn't seem to me to be that controversial; it all appears to have spilt over from this rank nonsense currently shat out by cast-iron dave and his bunch of chuckleheads.

There is something very wrong with this current tranche of political correctness and I think it comes down to the poor use of words and phrases; perhaps the most important one being "equality" - this appears to have been in place of "inequality" as it is one thing to respect ones proclivities, a/religion or ideology and quite another to claim your own set of proclivities are better.

What is being promoted here is intolerance and inequality before the law.

"Ask the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner to investigate an MP’s pre-2010 expenses and here is the answer you get:“All records relating to expenses claims before 2010 have now been destroyed. No unredacted information is now available here…”A committee headed by the Bercow has authorised the shredding of all the evidence..."

I mean if only there were some way to keep copies of these documents in a non-corporeal form which would only take up a byte-sized (sorry I slipped - I mean "bitesized", stupid typing-me) amount of space in his office - you know, like an extremely portable document format (lets call it a "pdf" for short), which he could keep on a tiny filing cabinet, perhaps disk shaped that you just need to put some electricity through to open, or "drive" it to open (lets abbreviate that to a "hard disk drive" for short).

The worst of it is that this would almost certainly be illegal for a business to do:

You must keep a record of all expenses and benefits you provide to your employees.

Your records need to show that you’ve reported accurately and your end-of-year forms are correct.

Now HMRC are vague on how long they need businesses to keep the records for (or at least don't explicitly state it on the top shelf) which to me means you should keep it indefinitely, particularly with all the tough talk we keep seeing about tax dodging and fiddling. And how about the shareholders, i.e. us? When it became apparent the vast majority of mps' were on the fiddle were we not told this would be investigated? Who investigated it? If this were a business this would be done by an external audit service who wouldn't sign off on the accounts unless they were kosher.

We clearly never got that; and I think we should start seeing the accounts ourselves.